Online Higher Education in Second Life?

XxtraLarGe asks: "As both a technician for my college's Distance Learning program and as an avid gamer, I have been tasked with investigating Second Life as a possible way for us to extend and enhance our online classes. I've done a lot of research, reading about what other schools have done. While I personally think it is a really cool idea, I am somewhat skeptical of the actual practicality and value of what seems to be a glorified chat room. I'd like to hear from others about their education experience in Second Life, particularly if you've been involved in setting up any online classes or taken any online classes. What sort of training would be required for the faculty, and is it really worth it?"

Comments

Does your school want to be taken seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

if so, consider the fact that you guys will look like total boners if you offer classes in a video game. I don't care if that sounds ok to you, accept that you're weird and think how it's going to sound to anyone who is in a position to hire anyone for a real job.

Re:Does your school want to be taken seriously?

[Kangburra]

I don't see why this has been modded down.

Second life is a game, education is not. Get the education through known (quantifiable) channels before playing with games.

Employers can be finicky about all aspects of your education, someone who gamed their diploma will struggle even if they are the best for the job.

My god

[bobetov]

Ok, so Second Life is cool. It's waaaay trendy. It has the sexy.

But it is chat. Only chat. Chat that you can't archive, that is done with word bubbles, and without a moderation system. What on earth would make you think that this would be a good platform for instruction?

Additionally:
- It's a beast on the requirements side, you need a ton of 3D horsepower and a fat network pipe to use it effectively
- Large groups of avatars clustered together hammer the client, turning things into a 4fps slideshow
- Server uptime has historically not been stellar, though that may have changed since I was involved
- It's distracting as all hell - your students will spend all their time customizing/scoping out each others' avatars

Please, for the love of pete, get over the hype on Second Life.

Re:My god

[Seumas]

If I met someone who acquired their education via Second Life, I would laugh hysterically at them. Then I would toss my spare change into their tin can and while I continue on my way to work.

Re:My god

[Aladrin]

Instruction is just chat, also. I fail to see how that's any different.

As for archiving, there are linux-based scripts to intercept the text chat and store it. So no issue there, either.

It's not THAT bad on the client side. If you don't get crazy and build a complete model of your real building in-game, you should be able to get quite a few people in the same area without issue.

Server uptime is questionable at best.

It IS distracting for sure.

Getting your slideshow to work can be an exercise in profanity.

And people can just wander through uninvited, unless you make everyone part owners and use special scripts to keep others out, etc... A real pain.

How do I know this? I used to go to the RoSL (Rubyists of Second Life) weekly meetings to listen to them talk about the cool Ruby stuff they were working on. Why don't I go now?

Because the idiots that staff Second Life can't fix my account and don't want to even talk to me about it. They had numerous security breaches, and on the first one, made everyone reset their password. Mine won't, it just gives an error and tells me to contact support. Email support claims they can't help other than to send the same broken url that's on the website. The phone support always does one of the following: disconnects immediately, puts me on hold forever and disconnects at the recording, puts me on hold forever and PROMISES they'll contact me and let's me record a message and then doesn't contact me, or goes into an infinite loop and won't let you do anything. I don't think there even ARE live people on that thing. I've certainly never talked to one in 6 MONTHS OF TRYING.

Seriously. If you have ANY issues whatsoever, you can kiss your precious class goodbye.

That's the real reason to stay far, far away from Second Life for anything non-trivial.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if nothing else, at least once a day your virtual classroom could be invaded by giant, flying lessons in human anatomy.

Overhyped

[tsa]

SL is so extremely overhyped right now it seems like the new Internet of the late 1990s. People even have conference chats in there, and now we need to have schools in there as well? Get a grip guys, and focus on the quality and results of your work. Doing your work in a new and cool way isn't always better you know. The only ones who will profit from the hype is the Linden 'family'.

Second Life is what YOU make it

[Wax_and_Wane]

Having taken part in the initial beta of the Second Life voice client starting two weeks ago, I can say that when voice capabilities come to SL they will certainly make it more useful to educational purposes. The system they are testing already works well and allows for 3D stereo sound. I realize that this alone does not make it perfect for education, but it does mean that it will not simply be a "glorified chat room" much longer.

I think attempting to bring learning systems to SL does have merit. The tools actually are shaping up and aside from the universities that are already in SL, I know of a few other educational offerings that are being developed now that could demonstrate value for educators and students.

I think that this type of immersive long-distance multiuser education is here to stay. Whether it will gain public acceptance during the platform life cycle of Second Life really depends on whether innovative educators keep coming into the virtual world prepared to push it forward. So if you are looking for a polished educational software platform to set up and get rolling quickly, then SL is not for you yet. On the other hand, if you want to be a pioneer and expand your thinking on how virtual worlds can fascilitate education then you should invest a little funding in SL and see what you can make of it.

Re:And what if...

[Moraelin]

And what if it is a school for videogaming? (Programming and Animation in particular, such schools exist).

I can't see how having the school _in_ a video game would help with either. You could use a video game as an illustration or assignment, maybe, but having virtual avatars dicking around in a virtual world? Seriously, how's that going to help?

So I wouldn't be turned off just because a student learned through a game (a top freshman or sophomore Naval pilot trained on a Microsoft's Flight Simulator a few years back to win Naval contest that only juniors and seniors won before... can't seem to find the story right now). I remember also a Discovery Channel special where they showed surgeons being trained on a video game.

Except those are very specialized simulators, extremely close to the real thing. I can't see how playing any game would help programming in the same way. If you play MS Flight Sim, you might actually learn something about airplanes, but if you click around a virtual classroom in Second Life, all you've learned from there is to click around in a game. Maybe a valuable skill for something else, but it won't make you a better programmer no matter how you want to slice it.

Additionally, SL does have the dubious reputation among many people of being basically a 3D cybersex game, and of pink flying penises. Deserved or undeserved, I'm not discussing that at this point. Just that it has it. So while many employers could maybe live with getting your courses online, many _will_ be turned off by such an association. It's basically on par with saying that you got your education at the local brothel. You know, one of the hookers also was good with computers and stuff.

OTOH, the worst classes I have ever taken were online classes. Impersonal, the teacher (in English anyways) seems to grade papers harsher without a face to put to it, lacking in clarification or time the teacher can devote to your question, and all around sucky for areas you aren't naturally good in. No social interaction, etc.

I'm not sure putting a silly avatar on it would help that horribly much. Or not enough to offset the other problems.

So I would ask: does this make sense and how exactly will it help students? Is this just eye candy? Will it put up barriers for education? (I know nothing about 2nd life - Windows Only? Does it require too high end of a computer to run comfortabley?) Make that a consideration. Is the professor going to struggle with this? Could this money be spent in a better way or would it be better not to spend it at all? Is it easy? When your semesters are only 14-15 weeks, you don't want to dick around for a week or two getting things running on either side. Does it or doesn't it make sense? It should be really that simple.

I'm guessing it would take a lot more than a week or two, including dealing with disruptions, pranks and whatnot. The pink flying penises aren't just a wisecrack, that's just what happened to someone's press release in SL.

Plus, I see it as more work for the teacher all semester long, if they actually want to simulate all the advantages of a real school. Just seeing the teacher standing there isn't going to do much.

Someone to cooperate with you

[Andabata]

Look beyond the hype and anti-hype. Second Life is a great platform for cooperation, and it is not just about chat.
People can build things together without having to know 3-D instructions of 3-D software. People can program in a C-like syntax, event-driven. It has produced a great result in beginning programming classes, since students have been able to produce enticing results from their first 'for','while', or if... And they find an immediate use for maths (3-D movement) and for lots of algorithms.

For instance, my undergraduate students are producing in Second Life "products" that behave as if they had RFID tags and are now developing a traditional Windows application for managing e-mails sent by those "products" - without actually having to acquire RFID tags. And they are just beginning their programming.

On the other hand, one of my PhD students is trying to integrate Second Life with teaching management software like Moodle or like our in-house system. There is an open source platform for accessing Moodle content from Second Life (Sloodle), but not the opposite.
I think you two could exchange interesting view. Get in touch.